Special Issue editorial: Leveraging genetically informative study designs to understand the development and familial transmission of psychopathology

The future of intergenerational transmission research: A prospective, three-generation approach

“…From a DP perspective, intergenerational transmission is very likely a result of both biological (e.g., genetic, hormonal) and environmental influences, as well as their interplay (see Wilson & Rhee, 2022). To date, research has sought to disentangle biological and environmental effects to understand direct and indirect pathways of transmission, with a newer interest in epigenetic mechanisms by which experiences and exposures can "get under the skin" to alter patterns of gene expression across generations (see Bos, 2017;Branje et al, 2020 for review).…”

“…Briefly, as a form of family-based, quasi-experimental design, CoT studies allow for tests of competing causal hypotheses based on differences in the degree to which family members share genes and environments (for detailed discussion, see Sellers et al, 2022;Wilson & Rhee, 2022). Children of monozygotic (MZ) twins are as genetically related to their parent as there are their parent's cotwin, with 50% of their genes shared.…”

Understanding alcohol use and alcohol use disorders from a developmental psychopathology perspective: Research advances, challenges, and future directions

“…One important contribution of the developmental psychopathology perspective has been to promote the study of geneenvironment interplay in these etiological pathways. A long history of twin and adoption studies have reported that AUDs show significant heritability, but developmental psychopathology theory has produced complex, multilevel studies to directly test gene-environment interaction and gene-environment correlation processes underlying parent and peer influences over development (Elam et al, 2023;Wilson & Rhee, 2022). Recently, these have included measured genomic risk (often polygenic risk scores, PRS).…”

“…Although the developmental psychopathology perspective has made important contributions by emphasizing these multilevel genetically informed studies, these studies also face challenges. The complex models require careful attention to sample size and ascertainment (Wilson & Rhee, 2022). Replication is challenging not only because of sample size but because there is little standardized measurement.…”